Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the
tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not
agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

    The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
    Of morning over the water growing blue.
    At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
    A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.

    But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green
    Leave the recesses of the room
    With misty auras drawn around their gloom
    Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.

    You, standing between the window and the bed
    Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie
    Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye
    Musing upon the contour of your head,
    Watching you comb your hair,
    Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,
    Tied with white braid above your slender hips
    Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare
    And delicate legs by contrast w...

I.

September On Cape Ann

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch, the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.
Was that a phoebe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?

II.

In An Annisquam Garden

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time l...

Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
The guarded heart against excess of rain.
Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays
With paints and clays,
And strings in many keys -
Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood
Of sun-shine where there is no breeze.
So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,
Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite -
Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.
From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought
From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,
Eyes, lips and hands and voice,
As if the stored up thought
From the earth sphere
Had given down the being of your choice
Conjured by the dream long sought.

  ...

    I went up and down the streets
    Here and there by day and night,
    Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
    Do you know why?
    My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
    And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
    Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
    And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
    But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
    To hold to the railing of the new life
    When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
    At the grave,
    Hiding herself, and her grief!

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caress'd,
Have left her solitude!

I ween that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Uncheck'd through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue,
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's sour...

In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Night’...

He stood alone on Fame's high mountain top,
His hands at rest, his forehead bound with bay;
And yet he watched with eyes unsatisfied
The downward winding way.

The great procession of the stars went by
Far overhead, beyond the mountain's rim,
But the unconquered worlds of time and space,
As nothing were to him.

There from his vantage ground, so still and high,
He watched the storm clouds when they rolled below,
And felt the wind mount up to where he stood
Amid eternal snow.

And sometimes in the valleys and the plains
He saw the little children at their play;
In cottage homes he saw the candle-light
Gleam out at close of day.

But he and loneliness kept feast and fast,
The while with weary eyes, by night and day;
They watched the...

My heart cried like a beaten child
Ceaselessly all night long;
I had to take my own cries
And thread them into a song.

One was a cry at black midnight
And one when the first cock crew,
My heart was like a beaten child,
But no one ever knew.

Life, you have put me in your debt
And I must serve you long,
But oh, the debt is terrible
That must be paid in song.

He lay awake, with a harassed air,
And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
    Seemed trouble-tried
As the dawn drew in on their faces there.

The chamber looked far over the sea
From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,
    And stepping a stride
He parted the window-drapery.

Above the level horizon spread
The sunrise, firing them foot to head
    From its smouldering lair,
And painting their pillows with dyes of red.

"What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear,
This dragging night, with starts in fear
    Of me, as it were,
Or of something evil hovering near?"

"My husband, can I have fear of you?
What should one fear from a man whom few,
    Or none, had matched
In that late long spell of delays undue!"

H...

L' aspetto sacro della terra vostra.

THE VIEW OF ROME PROMPTS HIM TO TEAR HIMSELF FROM LAURA, BUT LOVE WILL NOT ALLOW HIM.


    The solemn aspect of this sacred shore
Wakes for the misspent past my bitter sighs;
'Pause, wretched man! and turn,' as conscience cries,
Pointing the heavenward way where I should soar.
But soon another thought gets mastery o'er
The first, that so to palter were unwise;
E'en now the time, if memory err not, flies,
When we should wait our lady-love before.
I, for his aim then well I apprehend,
Within me freeze, as one who, sudden, hears
News unexpected which his soul offend.
Returns my first thought then, that disappears;
Nor know I which shall conquer, but till now
Within me they contend, nor hope of rest allow!

Behold him now his genuine colours wear,
    That specious False-One, by whose cruel wiles
    I lost thy amity; saw thy dear smiles
    Eclips'd; those smiles, that us'd my heart to cheer,
Wak'd by thy grateful sense of many a year
    When rose thy youth, by Friendship's pleasing toils
    Cultur'd; - but DYING! - O! for ever fade
    The angry fires. - Each thought, that might upbraid
Thy broken faith, which yet my soul deplores,
    Now as eternally is past and gone
    As are the interesting, the happy hours,
Days, years, we shar'd together. They are flown!
    Yet long must I lament thy hapless doom,
    Thy lavish'd life and early-hasten'd tomb.

I'd mourn the hopes that leave me,
    If thy smiles had left me too;
I'd weep when friends deceive me,
    If thou wert, like them, untrue.
But while I've thee before me,
    With heart so warm and eyes so bright,
No clouds can linger o'er me,
    That smile turns them all to light.

'Tis not in fate to harm me,
    While fate leaves thy love to me;
'Tis not in joy to charm me,
    Unless joy be shared with thee.
One minute's dream about thee
    Were worth a long, an endless year
Of waking bliss without thee,
    My own love, my only dear!

And tho' the hope be gone, love,
    That long sparkled o'er our way,
Oh! we shall journey on, love,
    More safely, without its ray.
Far better lights shall win me
    Along the path I...

Brown was my friend, and faithful--but so fat!
    He came to see me in the twilight dim;
    I rose politely and invited him
To take a seat--how heavily he sat!

He sat upon the sofa, where my hat,
    My wanton Zephyr, rested on its rim;
    Its build, unlike my friend's, was rather slim,
And when he rose, I saw it, crushed and flat.

O Hat, that wast the apple of my eye,
    Thy brim is bent, six cracks are in thy crown,
            And I shall never wear thee any more;
Upon a shelf thy loved remains shall lie,
    And with the years the dust will settle down
            On thee, the neatest hat I ever wore!

In the silence of my heart,
I will spend an hour with thee,
When my love shall rend apart
All the veil of mystery:

All that dim and misty veil
That shut in between our souls
When Death cried, "Ho, maiden, hail!"
And your barque sped on the shoals.

On the shoals? Nay, wrongly said.
On the breeze of Death that sweeps
Far from life, thy soul has sped
Out into unsounded deeps.

I shall take an hour and come
Sailing, darling, to thy side.
Wind nor sea may keep me from
Soft communings with my bride.

I shall rest my head on thee
As I did long days of yore,
When a calm, untroubled sea
Rocked thy vessel at the shore.

I shall take thy hand in mine,
And live o'er the olden days
When thy smile to me was wine,--

Like the tenth wave, that offers to the shore
Accumulated opulence and force,
So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore,
    Carry increasing passion down the course
Of time to proffer thee.
        Oh! not the faint
    First ripple of the sea should be its pride,
But the great climax of its unrestraint,
    Which culminates in one commanding tide.

The lesser billows of each crude emotion
    Break on life's strand, recede, and then unite
With love's large sea; and to some late devotion
    Unrecognised, they bring their lost delight.
So all the vanished fancies of my past
Live yet in this one passion, grand and vast.

Yes, now the longing is o’erpast,
Which, dogg’d by fear and fought by shame,
Shook her weak bosom day and night,
Consum’d her beauty like a flame,
And dimm’d it like the desert blast.
And though the curtains hide her face,
Yet were it lifted to the light
The sweet expression of her brow
Would charm the gazer, till his thought
Eras’d the ravages of time,
Fill’d up the hollow cheek, and brought
A freshness back as of her prime,
So healing is her quiet now.
So perfectly the lines express
A placid, settled loveliness;
Her youngest rival’s freshest grace.

But ah, though peace indeed is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear;
Though nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow;
Yet is a calm like this, in truth,
...

THE DIVINE VOICE
Go seek thine earth-born sisters, - thus the Voice
That all obey, - the sad and silent three;
These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice,
Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;

And when the secret of their griefs they tell,
Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes;
Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well;
So shall they cease from unavailing sighs.


THE ANGEL
Why thus, apart, - the swift-winged herald spake, -
Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres
While the trisagion's blending chords awake
In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?

FIRST SPIRIT
Chide not thy sisters, - thus the answer came; -
Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings
To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name...